If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine.
If an individual can't work in solidarity with his fellows, it's his duty to work alone.
His duty and his right.
We have been denying people that right.
We've been saying, more and more often,
you must work with the others,
you must accept the rule of the majority.
But any rule is tyranny.
The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive.
We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image of the Day
Rant of the Day: George Will, Fox News Sunday
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: They say that, because government is not competent. Frankly, it's not competent under Republicans or under Democrats. It is always a monopoly and monopolies are not disciplined by market forces that connect them with reality.
Teasing this segment, you said, can we have faith in government? I think we have much more to fear from excessive faith in government than from too little faith in government.
You asked, can we trust the government to do its job? What isn't its job nowadays? I just made a list of it. It's fine-tuning the curriculum of our students K through 12. It's monitoring sex on campuses. It's deciding how much ethanol we should put in our gas tanks. It has designed our light bulbs and it's worried sick over the name of the Washington football team.
Now, this is a government that doesn't know when to stop. The distilled essence, and here I get partisan, my friend, the distilled -
WILL: The distilled essence of progressivism is that government is a benign -- that is disinterested force, that's false. And, (b), it is stocked with experts who are really gifted at doing things. Republicans do this also. Democrats do it in domestic policy. The Republicans brought us nation-building and regime change. A common theme is the excessive faith in the skills of government.
WILL: The last time there was a sustained surge of confidence in government's competence was under Ronald Reagan, who said the government is going to do less, but it's going to do it right.Has Obama Lost Touch With Reality on the Economy?
I've been avoiding personally attacking The (Incompetent) One. I realize the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief is going to try to milk whatever credit he can over economic numbers, including the first sub-6% official unemployment rate, a surging stock market, an unexpectedly strong jobs report with a disappearing pre-recession jobs gap, a second sub-trillion dollar deficit. But this excerpt from his recent Northwestern University comments tests my limited patience:
As Americans, we can and should be proud of the progress that our country has made over these past six years. And here are the facts -- because sometimes the noise clutters and I think confuses the nature of the reality out there. Here are the facts: When I took office, businesses were laying off 800,000 Americans a month. Today, our businesses are hiring 200,000 Americans a month. The unemployment rate has come down from a high of 10 percent in 2009, to 6.1 percent today. Over the past four and a half years, our businesses have created 10 million new jobs; this is the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job creation in our history. Think about that. And you don’t have to applaud at -- because I’m going to be giving you a lot of good statistics. Right now, there are more job openings than at any time since 2001. All told, the United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined. I want you to think about that. We have put more people back to work, here in America, than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined...So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office. By every economic measure, we are better off now than we were when I took office. At the same time, it’s also indisputable that millions of Americans don’t yet feel enough of the benefits of a growing economy where it matters most -- and that's in their own lives.I saw a recent poll that suggests even fellow Democrats lack confidence in the Obama recovery:
Just 24 percent of Americans say they are extremely or quite confident in Obama's economic policies and goals, down from 33 percent when the question was last asked in June 2013, the previous low-point of the Obama presidency. And 44 percent of the public say they have no confidence at all in the president on the economy, tied with the prior low in August 2012. (Prior surveys were conducted by the NBC/Wall Street Journal). The CNBC survey found the president's economic leadership lacking majority support of every single demographic group, including only 45 percent of Democrats saying they are extremely or quite confident in the president when it comes to the economy. The survey comes in the fifth year of an economic expansion that is described by economists as at best lackluster. Median incomes have remained stagnant, wage growth has been slow and income inequality has grown. Millions of Americans remain unemployed and have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work. Millions more are underemployed in part-time work, even though they would prefer to work full time.Let's be clear: Obama is picking and choosing convenient datasets. In terms of hiring, we have a labor force participation rate issue, where a lot of the drop in the official unemployment rate has to do with workers dropping out of the official labor force because they've given up trying to find work--and it's not simply an artifact of Baby Boomer retirements--if you look at young workers and middle-aged groups, those are down, and if anything older workers seem to be pushing retirement out, probably because two major stock market corrections over the past 14 years have ravaged their retirement nest eggs. Banks are sitting on excess reserves, buying Treasury debt because they don't see profitable lending alternatives; many businesses have their best balance sheets in years but are loathe to invest, despite a cash hoard, in the current environment. If you look at the stock market, a couple of points: first, even on a nominal basis, any annual gain would be mediocre at best (just take a long-term return rate of say 8%: using the Rule of 72, it should take 9 years for the investment to double; we haven't come close to doubling over 14 years. In fact, adjusting for inflation, we are barely over breakeven for the Dow and underwater on the S&P and Nasdaq (see below). The second point is, most lower/middle-income people have not significantly benefited from recent stock gains--but if you had your money in savings or fixed-income investments, you've cleared little if any from the effects of Fed ZIRP policy, taxes and/or loss in purchasing power due to inflation. Wage gains have been soft and for many households, their home is their biggest asset, and depending on when a person bought his house, his mortgage may still be underwater relative to market price or little, if any equity.
Note that the post WWI depression was short-lived, and we have normally seen much more robust economic/job growth after most recessions. The fact of the matter is that millions of potential workers have entered the labor force since 2007, and even if we have finally reached the pre-recession high, job growth is far below what it needs to accommodate both new entrants and long-term discouraged workers. And Obama's policies have been a detriment: his EPA is basically raising business costs, and the cost of employment has been raised by healthcare mandates. See the second chart below.
Finally, Obama is trying to claim undue credit for deficit control. Let's first point out that Obama hasn't done anything about unfunded entitlements (social security and Medicare--and don't even start to talk about double-counting Medicare savings which are being used to fund, in part, ObamaCare), which by some estimates add $5T to each year's real deficit. Second, keep in mind interest expenses are abnormally low because of Fed monetary policy; if and when interest rates are normal, interest expenses will skyrocket. Third--give me a break; only a GOP House has managed to break Obama's streak of trillion-dollar deficits. Let's remember the federal budget has increased nearly a trillion dollars a year since the Dems took control of Congress in 2007, and Obama forced a government shutdown by refusing to cut the budget--never mind squealing like a stuck pig over nominal sequester cuts.
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| Via Doug Short |
Will America Fail?
The Common Core Debate
Just a side note about the math kerfuffle: since I have a couple of math degrees, I have a passing interest. I also have a niece who teaches junior high math and is a Common Core enthusiast. I have not read the standards in detail to comment, but I've seen enough anecdotal evidence of math-literate parents, even professional engineers, who find themselves baffled helping lower-grade children with their homework, to question the implementation. A paradigm shift in teaching math seems to be pushing on a string; I would like to see statistical data comparing behavioral criteria on the approaches. I think some states, like Indiana and Massachusetts, were very competitive, nationally and internationally, under "old school" math; what about international instruction? Is the reason they do so well because of new paradigm math implementation? It would seem to me before reinventing math education, we should be looking to see where we are seeing proficiency in math aptitude and achievement and attempt to discern relevant success factors. If I had a better achieving state system, why would I accept federal dollars to change what is working?
I will say that I'm sympathetic to the criticisms of Professors Milgram and Stotsky. They were members of the Common Core validation committee. To be clear, they are more focused on whether students are prepared for college work, particular in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines and a STEM-savvy growth economy; I've seen Milgram criticizing some of the mistakes and/or dubiously specified standards in lower and middle-school math including geometry (e.g., here), but much of his dismay is based on weak standards beyond Algebra II:
Research has shown that the highest-level math course taken in high school is the single best predictor of college success. Only 39 percent of the members of the class of 1992 who entered college having taken no farther than Algebra II earned a college degree. The authors estimate that the number will shrink to 31-33 percent for the class of 2012.
Two of the authors of the Common Core math standards [CCMS], Jason Zimba and William McCallum, have publicly acknowledged the standards’ weakness. At a public meeting in Massachusetts in 2010, Zimba said the CCMS is “not for STEM” and “not for selective colleges.”
Indeed, among students intending to major in STEM fields, just 2 percent of those whose first college math course is pre-calculus or lower ever graduate with a STEM degree. Proponents claim the Common Core standards are internationally benchmarked, but compulsory standards for the lower secondary grades in China are more advanced than any CCMS material.Also worrisome is the bait and switch from mathematics aptitude to mathematics achievement in national exams like the SAT. Aptitude is a different, more predictive construct, beyond say grades and similar criteria for achievement. The last thing we should be doing is watering down standards to accommodate dubious social promotion or equality in achievement objectives.
Indiana Cops Smashing Windows and Tazing Passengers Over Seat Belts?
Facebook Corner
(Being Classically Liberal). Still waiting for my Koch money.
Imagine how I feel. I have a (non-libertarian) relative who works for them, but they've had an anti-nepotism policy, so I haven't got my Koch money yet either.
(Mercatus Center). This program may have done more to curb obesity than the millions of dollars spent by the federal government to combat it: http://bit.ly/1s4yh0j
Why do progressive trolls always target this group? Really--the anti-scientific GMO/locavore nonsense... Let's get off the corporatist crap--just limit the size and scope of government power and money, and the cronies will wither away. If you want to bitch, talk about ending government meddling in agriculture since the New Deal.
The point the article is trying to make is that government guidelines are part of the problem. Remember the low-fat diet craze? It was like squeezing a balloon--manufacturers came up with hard margarine (with even worse trans fats) to replace bogeyman butter, we had low-fat salad dressings, etc.; what happened was to maintain product quality they ended up substituting carbs/sugar; lower-fat didn't necessarily translate to lower-calorie.
But just to give an example, I've noticed a number of big food companies have come up with say calorie packs of snack items or individual servings, slices of pizza, cake, etc., which deals with the portion size issue. This is a lot better than Big Nanny prohibiting supersized drinks. After all, the calories one eats at home can more than offset a micromanaged school lunch. And people with a healthy weight should not be prohibited their dietary preferences. A lot of times it's just reinventing a category; for example, McDonald's used to offer pedesterian side salads and then transformed their salad offerings to the point that adult women, like Oprah Winfrey, rediscovered a reason to go to McDonald's. But these moves weren't dictated by government, but by the market meeting the sweet spot of what consumers will buy.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall |
Barry Manilow, "Keep Each Other Warm". This marks the end of the Manilow restrospective. Next up: Linda Ronstadt.
